Friday, December 10, 2010

"Prepare the way of the Lord!" Depending on where you are at in time this phrase could have multiple meanings, The head of the house, the lord of the manor, the king of the country. For the past 2000 years it has a more significant meaning. In a little town a boy was born. His coming was foretold for many many years. But the people did not notice.

Some people in power were watching for Him, and thought they would set a trap. But he slipped through their fingers, and His parents found their way to a strange country, and there they hid. After a while they came back home, and the rest as they say is history. I am sure they had wonderful birthdays, nice simple little family get togethers, simple food, simple gifts. with always enough to go around.

Now when I look on how things are now I wish, hope, and pray that my kids will understand a nice simple little Christmas. Now when we were first married we did not have alot.. of kids that is... or money for that fact, but we were able to make gifts for all of our family by hand, we took inexpensive plastic wine glasses and filled them with candy. We made picture frames, and I foud an artist fungus ( I was working in the field at that time) and I traced an animal on it. But now after years of "rich" Christmases we are about to hit one that will have to be a simple one.

I guess I could rage, rage, against the machine. But I don't think so. Now having 7 kids this is going to be a minor miracle for us to pull off. But I have faith that we will be able to keep everything going. Don't judge me because we are fortunate to have 4 of our 7 kids on the Autism spectrum and will be able to "fool" them with small gifts in big boxes. We will be scouring the used bins are our favorite video game store, and we will probably be burning mix cd's of their favorite kids tunes in my ITunes library. But this leaves us in a bind for our older typical kids, but I guess the older 2 will be happy to have tuitions paid or cosigned for for the next semester. Ok I am going to rant not but rage against the machine a little here. Colleges cost too much. There I said it, also FAFSA is a joke. I mean my wife and I are making a fantastic living according to the Federal Government, and according to their messed up calculations we are able to afford 20,000 dollars plus for our 2 oldests kids to attend the colleges of their choices. Now we will never deny our kids the choice of the school they want to attend, heck I went to one of the most expensive schools out there for Forestry.

Well I guess I have babbled on for long enough... As this advent season progresses please remember that Christmas begins on December 25.